The Grapes of Wrath

Written in the late 1930s following Steinbeck's journalistic fieldwork in California migrant labor camps during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. Published by Viking Press in 1939, the novel chronicles the Joad family, Oklahoma tenant farmers driven off their land by Dust Bowl conditions who migrate westward along Route 66 to California. Alternates between narrative chapters following the Joad family (Tom Joad, Ma Joad, Jim Casy) and panoramic "intercalary" chapters that generalize the socio-economic displacement of Dust Bowl migrants. Combines vernacular Okie dialogue with biblical cadence and collective solidarity themes ("I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be everywhere."). Won both the 1939 National Book Award and the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Novel (category renamed Fiction in 1947). Eleanor Roosevelt praised the book's emotional power and, after visiting migrant labor camps in 1940, publicly confirmed that Steinbeck had not exaggerated the dire conditions.